Afire Love
by Spencer Quinn
Summary: After the third attempt of stopping Eggman's plans for Christmas, Shadow is diagnosed with a sin of his past-Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, a terminal illness that should have died out along with its last victim. Sonic and Silver want to help him get through this but is Shadow going to accept this helping hand?
1. A sin of the past

**Afire Love**

**Song:** _Afire Love_ by Ed Sheeran

**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone/anything in this story! I just own the idea! Plus it isn't a songfic. **

_I've been dwelling on past events that have happened in my life, lately—in particular, when I was 6 years old when my dad died. :( I've only ever talked to four people about my dad's death—one being my fourth grade teacher, the other three being my friends—but since receiving that pity, and the bullying when I was 10, I never opened up about anything anymore (mainly because I want nothing to do with pity—it's in my nature—and it was the time stupid people came into my life). Even though this story isn't directly about that, it's based on trials, ideas and feelings that occurred around the death of a person I loved in my life. _

Hope you enjoy this story.

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><p><span><strong>Prologue<strong>

_"Wow! Look at that!" Tails exclaimed, pointing up at the different shades of the sky. Sonic, Silver, Shadow, Blaze, Amy, Knuckles, Tails and Rouge were sitting on top of a hill in Green Hill Zone, just watching the sun sink over the horizon, painting the sky different shades of pink, orange, purple and blue. _

_"It's beautiful," Blaze added. _

_"Today was awesome!" Sonic hollered, flinging his hands up into the air. "Shadow, you really know how to live when you're about to die!" the blue hedgehog proclaimed as he grabbed both Shadow and Silver's shoulders. _

_Shadow didn't answer. His hand flew up to cover his nose automatically as blood dripped down his muzzle. By now, he would've gotten used to the frequent haemorrhages. Today, even though it was extremely chaotic, just couldn't be more perfect. He wouldn't let this memory down in his death. _

_But he'd spoken too soon…far too soon. Just as the last gleam of the sun disappeared over the horizon, Shadow had __screamed and fallen on his side. But it wasn't just a normal scream. It was a scarce piercing cry of pain. His left hand flew up to clutch the white fur on his chest. _

_"Shadow!" Silver cried. This exclamation, if it wasn't for the previous scream, had caught everyone's attention and they had all rushed over. _

_"What's wrong with him!?" Amy quickly asked. _

_"I-I don't—" Silver stuttered, but the ebony hedgehog had cut him off. _

_"C-Can't breathe…" he choked out, "Heart…lungs burning…" _

_Nothing else needed to be said. Sonic scooped the Ultimate Life Form up and ran for the hospital. "Come on! Hurry!" he yelled back to the others. __Shadow's eyes were closing fast and his breathing came out in painful gulps._

_"Doc!" Silver cried once they reached the hospital. Sonic gently placed the ebony hedgehog on the hospital bed. Shadow glanced up at the doctor as his vision bounced painfully._

_It was time up for him, but at least he got to spend his last day with the friends he had come to love as his family…_

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><p><strong>Part 1: A sin of the past<strong>

During the early days of the winter season, Eggman and co. had found more ways to take over the world—these plans being more invincible and successful than their past attempts. For once, Sonic and the team weren't sure if they could beat him this time.

However, the conflict between them went on for only three days after devising plans. Sonic, Shadow and Silver had finally ended the majority of the conflict by destroying all the newer merchandise and confronting the evil scientist directly.

"It's over, Egghead!" Sonic yelled after beating down the hangar door—or more likely, Shadow grabbed a hold of the chaos emerald on the ground and blasted it down into shards of titanium. When the blue hedgehog walked into the room Shadow dropped the emerald and leaned against the wall. Silver walked over and picked it up, looking at the counterpart doubtfully.

"You don't usually do that, do you?" he muttered. The ebony hedgehog cringed, rubbing his hand and regretting his action to drop the chaos emerald.

There was the sound of shattering glass and the two looked up to see the doctor escaping…again. Shadow facepalmed, ignoring Sonic's lingering grin, and walked off before Silver had the chance to confront him about the emerald.

"Next time we'll get him," Sonic vowed to his companions.

Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Rouge and Blaze were waiting outside when Sonic and Silver had come out of the HQ. The blue hedgehog explained that they had finished him for now.

"Next time, we'll be sure to get him. I guarantee that," he said with a thumbs-up.

But then he explained how Shadow had run off again.

"Where's he gone this time?" Rouge huffed, dusting off her gloves.

"No idea," Sonic replied with a shrug. "He couldn't have gone far—he was with us a few minutes ago."

"He didn't use Chaos Control—he dropped this earlier," Silver announced, revealing the green Chaos Emerald in his hand. Blaze tilted her head and grabbed the emerald.

This was strange, coming from the Ultimate Life Form. Shadow was never without a Chaos Emerald. But in the two days that Eggman had been in control he didn't seem to use it at all.

"I saw him go that way, come on," the future hedgehog announced, glowing a bright cyan before lifting off the ground and pointing back to Knothole. Sonic looked over at the others and shrugged before he ran after the telekinetic hedgehog.

Just before they reached Knothole, the two hedgehogs caught onto the sound of shaky coughs and looked around to see what its source was, which lead their knacks to the east, going completely off track from the village. The two hedgehogs glanced at each other in worry.

"No way that's him," Sonic muttered as Silver landed on the ground and followed the path of blood. There the two hedgehogs saw in shock the ebony hedgehog on his hands and knees, coughing raggedly.

"Shadow! You okay?" the blue hedgehog exclaimed as he ran forward, causing Shadow to flinch slightly.

"I'm _fine!_" Shadow gasped, his voice sounding laboured and coarse from coughing too much.

"No, you're not—you're trying to drag yourself back to the village," Silver insisted, running beside him. "What the heck happened to you?"

The Ultimate Life Form's arms shuddered and twisted, triggering him to crumple and yelp in pain and annoyance as he hit the snow. While he was pushing himself over to lie on his side, his hand clutched the white fur on his chest. His chest was hurting him a lot today. It was hurting last night too, but tonight it felt like his heart and lungs were set on fire.

Sonic tentatively reached out his hand, cautious as if the older hedgehog was about to shoot Chaos Spears at him, and gently placed it on his forehead. Since his hand was warm, Shadow winced and glared up at the blue hedgehog. The blue blur gasped at how cold his forehead was and jerked his hand away. Now the Ultimate Life Form sighed in relief and relaxed a little.

"What's wrong with him?" Silver asked, his concern now getting the better of him.

_He's freezing—how come he can't feel that?! _"Silver, call 911," the cobalt hedgehog ordered as Shadow curled up on the ground. That order was enough warning to tell him it was bad. The only important thing he needed to know was that Shadow was cold and he couldn't feel it. Silver pulled a cell phone into his hand.

"This is the emergency services. What service do you require?" a composed feminine voice asked on the other line. Under times of great tension, Silver was known for his ability to stumble into a range of different languages—this time he was yelling in Dutch. It took some time, but Sonic managed to grapple the cell phone out of the omnilingual hedgehog's clasp and talk to the operative on the other line.

"We need an ambulance," he answered, laying Shadow's head down on his lap. The elder moaned softly in distress when he was moved.

"Okay, honey. I'll put you through…" the operative's voice trailed and then asked "So what's your emergency?"

"I'm Sonic the Hedgehog, and my friend has a _really_ low temperature and he's grabbing at his chest a lot. I think it's hurting him."

The operative sighed, thinking how scared that boy must be right now. "Alright, the guys will be down there shortly."

"Thank you, really." The line cut off and the trio were elusively conscious of sirens keening in the distance.

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><p>Two painful hours had ticked past since Shadow was taken to the hospital, and finally the doctor had come out with the scans.<p>

"Is he okay?" Silver asked, slightly agitated.

The doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid it's bad news," he responded.

_No, we don't want bad news!_ Sonic thought to himself, becoming faintly unnerved. Normally he was calm in situations like this—because it would be good news and the casualty would be fine after an overnight stay, maybe even less than that. However, this was bad news, so now the blue blur could only fear the worst. "What is it?"

"Well, according to these MRIs there's a tumour in his brain—which may have been caused by influences to certain energy sources and waves."

"Oh," Silver muttered to himself as he was handed the X-rays. "Maybe _that's_ why he dropped the emerald."

"We haven't a clue if the cyst is cancerous just yet, we'll need to run more tests to make sure," the doctor continued. "But for now, he's in a stable condition."

"Can we go see him?"

"Of course. He must be feeling nervous by now."

Turns out Shadow wasn't nervous. Nope, not at all. _Nervous_ didn't even begin to cover how the dark hedgehog felt—he was frightened about what had happened, embarrassed that he was in the hospital, sick knowing there was something wrong with him. His head was turned towards the window—he couldn't face his friends like this. Shadow cracked open a ruby red eye and the first thing he saw was the reflection of Sonic's smile in the window. "They want to cut my head open, don't they?" he croaked meekly.

"It's not definite yet, Shadow," Silver said. He rubbed the back of his neck anxiously while revealing the tests. "They said while looking at the X-rays there might be a cyst in your brain. They thought you might have c—"

"It's _not_ cancer," Shadow assured, blearily. He sat up to look directly over at Sonic and Silver's confused expressions. "It isn't sound enough to be cancer."

"You knew about this? For how long?" Silver asked.

"50 years, but I never knew I had it. It was Maria who last had it."

"Wait, are you talking about…?" Sonic trailed off, already dreading the next answer.

Shadow nodded. "Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Syndrome—NIDS for short…Certain events later in life could trigger the disease to go off…what happened back there confirmed that theory."

"How can you tell?"

"In the early stages of the disease, Maria's skin would turn ice cold, she said she felt like she had a fever, felt like her lungs were burning, and sometimes she'd forget where she was or who I was…" He took the X-rays gently out of Silver's hand and scanned over them. He shook his head, hands shaking. "These scans…they're a spitting image to Maria's…" A tear stung the corner of his eye and he brushed it away, instinctively.

"…Shadow?"

"…the disease is incurable—anybody diagnosed with the virus is already dead."

"Shadow, this is the modern age!" Sonic clarified, grabbing his shoulders and catching him by surprise. "We could help fight these kinds of things now! I mean, it's just early days yet, right?"

The ebony hedgehog nodded, bringing his knees up to hug them.

"What did you and Maria used to do? You must have done something to help her—then we could do that to help you."

While biting his lip and thinking about this, Shadow tried to get to his feet. Silver lurched up and put a hand on his shoulder to try and steady him when he almost kneeled to the ground.

"Be careful, Shadow."

"Silver, I don't mean to sound cruel, but I know what I'm doing," he mumbled, struggling to his feet and sluggishly trudging over to the window.

It had been snowing a few hours ago so the mist on the window had thickened. The two younger hedgehogs panicked slightly when Shadow made his way to stand on the unsteady chair that was sitting in the corner of the room. The elder ignored them and wiped the top half of the window with his hand. Beyond the glow of the lamp, pinpoints of light were scattered across the sky.

"When I was up in space, Maria and I used to try and name the star constellations." Shadow shrugged. "It was one of the hobbies I arranged to keep her mind off the disease, but…for me it was…_fun_," he said, hopping lightly back to the ground and walking back to sit down on the bed. For a while the trio were trying to pick out star patterns, ignoring everything that had happened just in a couple of hours. Sonic looked over at Shadow and saw something unusual—a rare _happy_ smile had made its way onto his face. An idea started to form in his mind—maybe they could help take his mind off the disease?

Shadow's smile vanished as he looked down at his clasped hands. "The others can't know about this. This stays between us," he said, his voice becoming solemn.

"What do you mean? That you're a nerd when it comes to this kind of stuff?" Sonic asked flippantly, overlooking the elder's thoughtful expression.

"That I'm sick." Now Sonic's pervasive smile was gone, replaced by a look of alarm. "They don't need any more problems, not when Eggman is trying to take his plans to a whole different level."

Obviously Silver had a problem with that statement. "But in a matter of time they have to know about this!"

"They can't know about it—they worry too much."

"Because we care about you—you're like family."

"They _cannot_ know about _this_!" Shadow demanded. "You guys have enough to worry about without _me_ getting in the way!"

"Shadow, I understand what you're going through…but what would happen when it becomes worse?" Sonic cut in, causing Shadow to fall silent. He continued with his speech. "People will start knowing about it. It will help if they knew about it sooner rather than later—deep down, you know I'm right."

The Ultimate Life Form scowled, hating how the blue blur was right. "Fine."

"We could tell them for you if you want, and it'll make things a little easier for you," the telekinetic hedgehog suggested.

Shadow just nodded in reply, still trying to grasp the reality that he—the Ultimate Life Form—was terminally ill. It all just started to sink in…

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><p><strong>There will be three parts to this story. I'm begging you all now, just don't kill me in the reviews, please! <strong>

**Stay tuned for the next part! **


	2. Never Give Up

**Afire Love**

A/N: I didn't think you guys would actually like this story at first, but hey! It turns out I have an audience. But enough of that. In the meantime, here's the next part. At this point it got a little difficult to write because I'm writing from experience…could be hinting toward possible character death later? :O

Reviews are how this story keeps going!

Enjoy.

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><p><span><strong>Part 2: Never give up<strong>

"Did…did the doctors find out what it was?" Silver asked, anxiously, a few hours after Shadow's head had cleared up. Shadow was turned away from him with his eyes closed, but the telekinetic hedgehog could tell that he was awake.

"…no, they didn't. I'll…have to spell it out to them that I know what it is," he responded sleepily after a while.

The ebony hedgehog had been taken to surgery almost six hours ago now. Sonic left just as he'd gotten into the operation. Three hours later the doctors brought him back into the hospital room where Silver was still waiting for him. At the time, the elder hedgehog was as high as a kite on morphine so it took a while for him to adjust to what was happening at the moment.

"Do they at least know it's not cancer?"

"Who cares? NIDS is nearly worse than cancer—either way, death is inevitable."

Silver didn't like this at all. Right now, he was hoping to find a way for the dark hedgehog to look past the virus. Shadow was always so negative—he didn't seem to care about anything anymore.

Silver was hoping that he'd see…well, _hope_ in his life now. Did he just completely overlook that his friends cared about him? He must have—he looked more depressed than usual, now that he knew that there was something wrong with him.

The doctor came into the room, causing Shadow to turn over and rub his eyes. "Shadow. You have two visitors here!"

"Sonic?" Shadow asked, hopefully. Maybe he was getting him out!

"Wait, but you said _two_ visitors," Silver pointed out, sweatdropping as Shadow's optimistic expression suddenly transformed into frustration. "Er…"

"He _didn't_," the ebony hedgehog snarled, gripping his left inhibitor ring. The doctor walked out to go get the visitors, and also to avoid the tantrum that was probably going to follow the patient's annoyance.

"Shadow, I think he did," the telekinetic hedgehog muttered.

The door swung open again and in walked the two visitors. Shadow shrank in confidence when he saw who it was.

_Oh no_, he thought to himself, agonisingly. Here's a short list of things he doesn't want that has to do with his disease—for his life to end in tears, for his likely death to be unreasonably painful, and for his friends to see him in this condition. Rouge and Blaze were standing before the foot of the bed—this was bad.

Rouge was _always_ checking up on Shadow, ensuring if he was okay.

Well, at first he thought what anybody would think: what were friends for?

The only problem was that if she found out something was wrong with him, then she'd try anything to help him out. It's understandable sometimes, depending on how bad he was feeling. This situation was bad enough with Sonic and Silver finding out his new flaw.

Blaze walked around to sit next to Silver. "At first, I thought the hospital part was just a trick, considering how Sonic has been lately," she muttered to him.

"Yeah…" Silver replied, smiling feebly.

"What's wrong? All Sonic told us was that you two were in the hospital, are you alright?" Silver suddenly noticed the worry in his friend's voice and jumped to her defence.

"Oh, don't worry! There's nothing wrong with me, Blaze—I'm fine. But…" The future kid looked over at Shadow, who had his head in his hands and Rouge sitting next to him on the bed.

"What's the point in hiding it, Silver? He's already told them I'm in hospital," he grumbled behind his hands. The bat nudged his arm.

"Tell us what's wrong then. It won't be the end of the world, would it?" she asked. Shadow looked up at her. Judging by the sudden silence that filled the atmosphere, he had everybody's attention. He didn't like the silence.

"I…well…last night, the doctor's found a tumour in my brain…but judging by how it was sub-zero last night and I felt feverish, it was enough to tell me its not stable enough to be cancer…it's…something _much_ worse…"

"What could be worse than cancer?" Already, Rouge had a bad feeling about this.

Shadow took a deep breath, not sure if he could tell her. Now it felt like his throat had just tied itself into a knot and he couldn't speak.

"Shadow?"

Silver took this as his and Blaze's cue to leave, noticing that the two may need some time to get used to this. The look on Shadow's face when Silver looked back was one of pure alarm—one that screamed out _"Don't leave me here!"_

Strange, Shadow always preferred to be alone in situations like this.

"What happened when you found him? I think I've seen something like this in my home dimension."

"Well…he was coughing a lot, and he was trying to drag himself back to Knothole. Then Sonic said something about him having the same temperature of dry ice when we were waiting here—_that's_ how cold he was."

For a while, the lavender cat was silent, thinking to herself. "Rouge thought that he'd just wandered off like he usually does and she was planning to get back at him."

"How did she react when Sonic told you?"

There was a clatter in the other room and the two rushed in to see Rouge hugging Shadow, tears streaming down her face. Shadow, meanwhile, had a vacant and confused look on his face, as if he had simply forgotten about everything that had just happened.

"Rouge, I'm…sorry…" he murmured, trying to return the hug. "I-I didn't think about—"

"Shadow, you know we're going to be here for you, don't you?" Silver asked.

"We're all just a big, and elusively messed up, family—_you're_ part of it too, Shadow," Blaze assured. Shadow nodded, now feeling a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

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><p>Everyone was actually more supportive than Shadow was first led to believe. For once, his focus now was staying alive long enough for the sake of his family.<p>

He realized that it's probably the most important thing in his life now.

As time went on, the team saw that the Ultimate Life Form was becoming gradually weaker. His attitude became agitated—nobody could blame him if the doctors wouldn't let him out of the hospital—he could barely see without seeing two of everything around him, Sonic saw that he was trembling a lot and saying that it was hot—he said it scared him sometimes.

It took fifty years for the illness to settle in, but only a week for it to become worse. Nobody—not even the victim himself—liked the progress of this illness.

"Come on, Shadow," Silver said. He had been helping Shadow to get back to his feet. Improvement had been slow, since the poor guy's hope crumbled along with his health. It was as if everything just relied on waiting for the end to come.

Shadow swung his legs over to hang off the side of the bed, but he stopped when his vision split into two again. He looked up at Silver—or which ever vision he thought was Silver. "I can't do it," he said automatically. "I can't even see straight."

He said this every time. Usually, Silver would just give up by the third attempt and hope to try again tomorrow.

But that was until he remembered his vow: _Never give up_.

Silver reached out and grabbed his shoulder. "Shadow, you can do it, trust me," he said.

"No, I _can't_," the Ultimate Life Form persisted. "If I can't see clearly now, I might run into a wall. But if I don't, who's to say I won't fall later?"

"Shadow, listen to me. First of all, you won't be running so soon—I won't do that to you. Secondly, you won't fall—I won't let you. Come on, what have I always said when things looked bad?"

Shadow raked his brain for answers. "The Iblis Trigger must die?" he asked as if the answer was obvious.

_You still haven't lost your cruel sense of humour,_ he thought to himself with a slight smirk."No no, after that?"

The ebony hedgehog sighed. "…I'll never give up." The younger hedgehog nodded as Shadow glared at him. But he slowly lowered himself to ground level.

"Just one step at a time."

One step…two steps…three steps—at first he thought he had it. That was until a sharp pain shot through his right leg and he was about to fall over—if Silver hadn't rushed over and caught him.

The elder winced. "What the hell was that?" he croaked. Silver seemed a little more worried with what was running down his muzzle. Shadow noticed his expression and looked up. "What?"

The younger put an arm around his waist and hauled him over to look in the mirror. Shadow's face was one of abstract horror—his nose was dripping blood like it was a faucet. The pain in his leg was overlooked. Silver placed him on the ground, where he struggled over to the sink and examined the blood before grabbing for the towel. "No, no, no, how did this happen?" he asked, holding his right hand below his chin and holding the towel to his nose.

"Okay, let's get you back into bed," Silver said, using his powers to place Shadow back in the hospital bed.

But despite the setback, the two felt like they'd accomplished something today.

"At least today wasn't a total loss," Silver ensured. Shadow just nodded as the blood poured out. At least he knew never to give up—and that his friends would support him when he fell.

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><p>By now, two weeks had passed, and it was nearly Christmas—it was the first day of the magical month of December. Sonic came by the hospital to see if they could get Shadow out of there—but since Shadow's condition only became worse over time, permission to admit the patient out of the hospital was denied.<p>

Sonic walked down the corridor—which at the moment felt like the Walk of Shame—and sauntered over to Shadow's room. What confused him, though, was that he thought he heard singing. The corridor suddenly didn't seem so gloomy now—all he knew and needed to know was that there was singing in the hospital! Sonic's ears twitched to listen to where the melody was coming from.

Surprisingly enough, it was strongest near Shadow's room. So, he pushed through the door to see both Silver and Shadow _singing._ Silver was looking out the window and Shadow was walking around with a drip line in his arm. It was good to see him finally walking.

_Mirror on the wall.  
>Here we are again.<br>Through my rise and fall.  
>You've been my only friend…<em>

_You told me that they can't…  
>Understand the man I am.<br>So why are we  
>Talking to each other again?<em> Shadow was singing.

"Hey, guys. What's up?" the blue hedgehog asked.

Shadow cleared his throat and glanced over at Sonic. "Hey," he greeted. He smirked as Sonic moved to sit by the window. "Being in the hospital does things to your brain."

"But, Shadow, yours is already broken."

"Yes, so the hospital part just made it worse."

Sonic smirked a little as he looked up at the sky. "Shadow…?"

"Yeah?"

"If you were allowed out for Christmas, where would you want to go?"

"Home," he answered mindlessly.

"Really? Nowhere impressive?"

"_Anywhere_ would be better than the hospital, Sonic. I've wanted to go home ever since I came into the hospital."

"…is that why you left the doctor's base early? Because you knew we'd worry?" Silver asked, sort of catching Shadow by surprise.

"…that had something to do with it, yes. The reason why I walked off is because I knew I'd land myself in the hospital anyway. Why do you ask if I want to go somewhere for Christmas? I can't leave the hospital anyway."

Sonic rubbed the back of his neck. "I was hoping to get you out of the hospital for Christmas, spend some time with everyone."

"And what did the doctor say about that?"

The blue hedgehog poked his tongue out. "Permission denied. But…" He tried to think of the right words. "…when have I ever let rules get in my way?"

The other two hedgehogs looked at him in alarm. "What?"

"Sonic, you can't be serious!" Silver hissed.

"I am, actually. If he's just going to die, why not let him be around people? He's only limited to two visitors a day."

"You know, I'm fully aware of this conversation, right?" Shadow spoke up as he walked over to sit back on the bed. "I literally do not care if people are involved with this—I need to get out of this hospital."

"Don't worry, I already have a plan," Sonic assured, the smug smile lighting up his face.

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><p><strong>I feel my writing's getting a little sloppy—I don't think I even have a storyline in this one. But, remember to review and tell me how I'm going! <strong>

**Now, I'll see y'all in the next part!**


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